Engaging our culture

"Instead of engaging our culture in a meaningful way, we (Christians) have often preferred a siege mentality, retreating into the safety of our Christian subculture. We are more comfortable fighting culture than we are being constructively involved in it. Ironically, on every front we mount highly charged rhetorical battles with a worldly culture, while at the same time, within the walls of our subculture, we try to imitate the worldly culture's nuance. This retreat form the world turns into a sort of cultural catch-22. The more we remove ourselves from the world, the worse the world gets in the absence of a Christian influence and the stronger the argument becomes to stay away from the world. If we are training our children to understand and critically examine the world's popular art, literature, music, and film instead of limiting them to safe Christian versions of these things, we might have a different world waiting for us in the next generation. But it may not be too late to rethink our approach.

Thousands of Christians lobby for conservative legislation; few go into politics. Thousands of Christians protest abortion clinics; few provide for single moms or adopt babies. Thousands boycott blasphemous movies; few seed a vocation in Hollywood."

*taken from the book Fearless Faith, Living Beyond the Walls of Safe Christianity by John Fischer

Be blessed,
Steve